Does the clause/sub clause structure have any legal import?

[Julian]

I am trustee for a block of flats in South Africa. I realise that any answer here will relate to UK law but an issue came up that made me interested in knowing at least the UK answer since I assume it relates to a general principle that I would be interesting to at least partially understand. If anyone can tell me the answer under SA law then that would be great but, given the similarities between the legal systems, if I were a betting man I would guess that the answer will be the same in both jurisdictions.

The specific example that peaked my curiosity is as follows…

The individual units (flats, balconies, storerooms, gym, etc) are called “sections”. In our management rules, a legal document that is filed with the deeds office, there are a set of clauses as follows (I’m simplifying the text vastly and using made-up section numbers)…

7.2 Sections 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 are for residential use only

7.3 Sections 7, 8 and 9 are strictly not for residential use

……7.3.1 Don’t do bad stuff in a section

.….7.3.2 Don’t play TV, radio or sound systems loudly or do anything else that will disturb other people

……7.3.3 Some other stuff clearly applicable to residential units.

[ End of clause 7.3 ]

(Sorry about the dots to get the indenting, spaces didn’t work and I don’t want to spend time right now trying to find out how to do the formatting properly.)

In my layperson’s view the above really should have had 7.3.1, 7.3.2 and 7.3.3 at the top 7.x level as clauses 7.4, 7.5 and 7.6 since, again as a layperson, I could interpret the fact that the sub clauses are nested under the clause that explicitly talks about non-residential sections as meaning that they only apply to those sections explicitly identified at the top level of 7.3, i.e. non-residential sections, despite the fact that the sub clauses in my view clearly talk about behaviour in residential sections.

What is the legal import of the current nesting? Is tidying this up something that is just a nice-to-do activity that could be done at a time when there is some other more pressing need to revise the document or is this something that could potentially undermine the ability to enforce those sub clauses for occupants of the residential sections identified in clause 7.2?

- Julian

[GoSeigen]

Can you refer to an earlier version of the document, or can you ask the attorneys who did the conveyancing for advice?

I think it would be better not to "fix" them without evidence of a more correct version as even in their current messy state it is plain to any reader that there may be a problem with the numbering, if it ever becomes an issue the parties will know that they need to resolve what happened there. If nothing bad ever happens then no-one is any the worse for the funny numbering remaining.

GS

[tacpot12]

I know that many contracts in the UK contain a clause that mentions that the headings are not to be regarded as relevant (so a legal analysis of the contract would ignore the headings).

This suggests that if such a clause is NOT included, then a party to the contract might be allowed to infer that the headings DID have some meaning.

I think the siutation is similar in your case, where the numbering can be inferred to have some meaning, unless there is a clause stating otherwise. But what meaning can be infered from the current numbering is something that only a judge can decide. I agree with GoSeigen's advice not to fix them without alot of careful thought and/or research.